


Spark

by doublejoint



Series: peachtober 2020 [6]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Kuukaku builds dollhouses, and blows them up.
Series: peachtober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953295
Kudos: 4





	Spark

**Author's Note:**

> #peachtober day 6: Wood
> 
> Mentions of canonical character death

Kuukaku studiously ignores the wooden dollhouse purchased for her by her parents. Its shape is too regular, its angles too sharp, its doors too much like the doors on their own house. If playing with it is supposed to stretch her imagination, playing with an imitation of the world around her seems counterproductive.

So she builds her own, and blows up the old one on the grass out back while Koganehiko and Shiroganehiko are teaching Kaien and watching Ganju. Too bad she gets seen by the day maid who screams louder than the explosion, which gets Kuukaku in nonstop lessons about propriety for a month, and barely enough time to work on the new dollhouse, which despite her best efforts isn’t really that good.

It doesn’t hold up under its own power, as tall as she wants to make it. The weight of the third floor collapses the whole thing and she has to build it back up again, and while it’s fun to play falling buildings, it’s not fun when Ganju gets into her room and topples it onto himself, and Kuukaku gets blamed for that too even though she’s nowhere near. And it’s less fun to take the ground out from under the dolls when it’s already shaky beneath them.

She still manages to sneak outside and blow this one up too, a better funeral than a bad effort deserved. This time, the maids are out of the way, but it leaves a nasty scorch mark on the lawn, and her parents decide to find a babysitter.

* * *

“How’d they rope you into this?” Kuukaku says, by way of greeting.

Their uncle Isshin is the head of another branch of the clan and a shinigami. He doubtless has more important things to do than babysit, so unless it involved blackmail Kuukaku’s pretty skeptical--he’s warm and friendly and overdramatic, but he can’t just say he has something like this and skip out on his captain. She’s about to bring this up when Kaien elbows her in the stomach to shut up.

“Rope me in? I’m just a good man who loves his family. Get ready for your uncle’s Spectacular Day of Fun-O-Rama!”

Kuukaku blinks. Kaien, next to her, is similarly silent.

“What?” says Isshin.

“Have fun with Ganju.”

Isshin falls to the ground in a theatrical sob as Kuukaku pushes past him into the house. She’s got more important things to do, and she knows her uncle--not very well, but well enough to know that he’s just faking and he’ll get over it. She looks back over her shoulder; Kaien’s not coming with her, but one of them has to be the responsible one and it’s not her.

* * *

“Kuukaku!” Isshin barges into her room, practically slamming the paper door as far as it will go.

She looks up from the structure on the floor, a long flat foundation. She’s not planning on more than one floor, but this time she’d like a tower on top with a bell that really rings, if she can get one from somewhere.

“What?”

“Is that any way to address your uncle?”

She ignores him, hammering the next nail into her foundation, gently, firmly.

“What are you building?”

“A dollhouse.”

“Your mom told me you blew up the dollhouse she gave you.”

“Yeah. And the replacement,” says Kuukaku.

Isshin doesn’t say anything after that; Kuukaku hammers in the next nail and then looks up, to make sure he’s still actually there. He is, grinning down at her like he’s caught her at something, a mouse in the cupboard.

“Want to know how to make a really big explosion?”

Kuukaku’s eyes narrow. Yes, her uncle always gives her candy when she goes over to his house; yes, he’d promised a spectacular day of something-or-other--but her parents trust him, and unlike Kaien he’s not just going off and doing his own thing, or caught in Ganju’s incessant questions at the moment.

“Okay.”

“Great!” Isshin says, but Kuukaku still isn’t entirely sold.

* * *

The sparkler sizzles like hot meat on the grill, and even under the harshness of the sun Ganju’s eyes are captivated by the sparks it throws. Kuukaku’s got to admit that she’s kind of impressed by it too, but she’s not going to say as much. Koganehiko and Shiroganehiko, sitting close by, do not exactly seem to disapprove. Interesting.

“Neat, huh?” says Isshin.

“Yeah,” says Kaien, “Kuukaku thinks so, too.”

She sticks her tongue out at him. 

“Well,” says Isshin, “I was going to show you what else I had, but if you don’t like this…”

It’s blatant manipulation, but Kuukaku will swallow her pride for this.

“It’s pretty cool.”

Isshin grins like he’s just been named head of the entire clan--he’s easily won over, apparently.

“Show me what you got, Uncle.”

* * *

Kuukaku never wanted to be head of the Shiba clan. She never thought it would be her either; it was going to be Kaien, and then his children after him--and then he went and got killed before he got around to having kids, and then their uncle went and disappeared, and, well--if he ever comes back, the title’s his if he wants it. There’s not much that comes with the family name anymore; it’s only her and Ganju and Koganehiko and Shiroganehiko and Bonnie--a couple of kids, a couple of retainers, and a boar. 

At least now Kuukaku’s in charge she gets to decide what the house looks like. She can blow it up and move it around as she pleases, set off fireworks in the dead of night with no one to tell her not to (not that Isshin ever did).

They’d know if he was dead; they have ways of making it more palatable than the worst of maulings, the most pathetic of coward’s fates. But as much as it is like Isshin to dump responsibility off on someone else, he wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, or without a big party with fireworks over the river. 

Well, wherever he is--whatever’s happened to him--she’ll just have to set off fireworks loud enough to reach him. He’ll know it’s her when he hears them.


End file.
